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Rugby

Rugby Injuries

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Specific Sports-Related Injuries

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Abstract

Rugby is a team sport like soccer, American football, and ice hockey that have been discussed in earlier chapters. This sport is full contact in nature, and consequently its players are susceptible to a significant number of injuries. This chapter provides a brief overview of the popular formats of this sport and discusses the injuries amongst the players with respect to the epidemiology, common sites, and the unique mechanics involved in the causation of injuries. Subsequently, the salient aspects of injury prevention are presented. The final section of this chapter includes wheelchair rugby which is a team sport of paralympic athletes.

In Rugby Union and Rugby League, there are 32–120 injuries and 39–463 injuries per 1000 match hours, respectively. The majority of these injuries (30–55%) in rugby players affect the lower limb. Muscle and tendon-related injuries are the predominant type of injuries (40 per 1000 match hours), followed by injuries to ligament and joint (non-bone) (34 per 1000 match hours). Systematic injury-related research and epidemiological data has enabled the introduction of injury prevention and awareness programmes such as RugbySmart (New Zealand) and BokSmart (South Africa) amongst others with current evidence suggesting a positive impact. Rule changes such as those related to safe scrum engagement implemented by the International Rugby Board in 2007 are aimed to minimise the risk of serious injury to players. Injury prevention programmes targeted at muscle strengthening, proprioception, resistance training, and player techniques including tackle height have been reported to reduce the risk of injury in rugby players.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sydney Orthopaedic Research Institute, Chatswood, NSW, Australia

    David Anthony Parker & Darshan Srishail Angadi

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  1. David Anthony Parker
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  2. Darshan Srishail Angadi
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Correspondence to Darshan Srishail Angadi .

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  1. Exercise and Sports Medicine, Department of Orthopedics, Rheumatology and Traumatology, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas – UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Sérgio Rocha Piedade

  2. Infirmerie Protestante, Caluire Lyon, France

    Philippe Neyret

  3. Clínica do Dragao - Espregueira-Mendes Sports Centre, FIFA Medical Centre of Excellence, Porto, Portugal

    João Espregueira-Mendes

  4. Instituto Cohen, Morumbi, São Paulo, Brazil

    Moises Cohen

  5. Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Mark R. Hutchinson

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Parker, D.A., Angadi, D.S. (2021). Rugby. In: Rocha Piedade, S., Neyret, P., Espregueira-Mendes, J., Cohen, M., Hutchinson, M.R. (eds) Specific Sports-Related Injuries. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66321-6_8

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